Diverse: Conversations with YA and Children’s Verse Novelists

Bringing together interviews with some of the most highly esteemed verse novelists writing for young adults and children today, DiVERSE develops an understanding of the poetics of the verse novel genre.

With poignant conversations with 28 verse novelists illuminating how writers combine elements of poetry and narrative to craft poetic stories, this collection provides the means to appreciate the verse novel’s diversity in its many variations and attests to recent shifts in the genre towards inclusive storytelling.Getting into the nuts and bolts of process, inspiration, technique, and the verse novel as a form, the writers discuss themes in their best-loved works such as representation of diverse voices, identities and lived experiences; empowering stories of girls and women; stories of LGBTIQ+, Black, First Nations, People of Colour, Asian, Minoritised Ethnic and people self-identifying as having a disability; body-positive messaging and resilience; and characters between countries, cultures, identities and languages.

A reference text and a writing resource, the book also includes lists of must-read verse novels and a broad introduction from editor Linda Weste.

Featuring authors from the UK, Australia and the US, the writers interviewed include: * Margarita Engle * Kirli Saunders * Carole Boston Weatherford * Rajani LaRocca * Safia Elhillo * Jasmine Warga * Melanie Crowder * Aida Salazar * Cordelia Jensen * Thanhhà Lai * Dean Atta * Lucy Cuthew * Rukhsanna Guidroz * Mariko Nagai * Ishle Yi Park * Jion Sheibani * Jasminne Mendez * Ann E. Burg * Marilyn Hilton * Reem Faruqi * Sarah Tregay * Holly Thompson * Chris Baron * Stephanie Hemphill * Chun Yu * Leza Lowitz * Helen Frost

Linda Weste is a writer, researcher, teacher and editor based at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she teaches poetry and poetics and completed her PhD in creative writing. Her verse novel Nothing Sacred (2015) won the Wesley Michael Wright Prize and was shortlisted for the Anne Elder Prize. She is editor of The Verse Novel: Australian & New Zealand (2021) Inside the Verse Novel: Writers on Writing (2020). Previously, she was an editor of TEXT Journal of Writing and Writing Programs.